Rotten Peaches

by Lisa de Nikolits

  The penultimate letter sucker-punches me. Literally knocks the wind out of me. I can’t believe what I’m reading. I put the letter down, hardly able to breathe.

  No,way. It can’t be true. Well, I won’t think about it, I simply will not.

  I go to the window and look down at the luxury golf course, at the lagoon and the enormous palm trees, and I’m as winded as if I’ve been thrown from a horse.

  I rush to the mini bar and crack open a tiny bottle of scotch and swallow it in one gulp. I open the vodka and do the same.

  No, this will never be thought of again. I will banish what I have just read, it has no place in my life. It will not change who I am.

  I sit down and read the final letter. It is the longest one and it was written after my mother had died although it was still addressed to her and it had been opened. In it, Marika journaled her relationship with my mother, as if revisiting their love in her mind for the last time. I learned more about how they met, when they met. Marika recounted conversations and I learned more about my life and my birth father and the despicable man my mother first married.

  Marika and my mother had celebrated their sixteenth anniversary shortly before my mother’s death and Marika wrote about her love for Ariana and how life was worthless without her. How she had to join her by taking her own life, rather than remaining in this world, so alone. She asked to be cremated and have her ashes scattered on my mother’s grave and I wondered if that had happened.

  Which is when I realize my father must have read the letters too. Who else would have opened the last one? And he hid them in a way that I would find them. Had he wanted me to know the truth about my mother? About me? I have no idea what to think.

  I need to get out of the room. I can’t bear to be alone with the letters for one more minute. It’s nearly suppertime. The entire day has passed and I’m starving, and my head is spinning a bit from the alcohol, of which I need a lot more. I pull on a tight black mini dress and high heels and go down to the bar.

  I order a large glass of wine and look around. Slim pickings. Married couples, gay couples, hen parties, and rowdy golf men. Hmm, maybe a golfing boy will help me forget my problems. I look at the group who have clearly been drinking for a while and I suddenly miss Dirk. I miss his sense of humour, his sarcasm, his uncompromising perspective.

  Oh god, what if Dirk ever finds out? What if anybody ever finds out? My face flushes that meaty colour at the thought. But what am I thinking? Dirk and I are history. What stupid thoughts are these? Do I imagine that he’ll reappear, money in hand, an apology as long as his arm, and a wedding proposal for a happy-ever-after? I’m beyond stupid. He’s a home-grown terrorist, and never mind that, he’s also fucking my best friend. And, by all accounts, managing to fuck her much better than he had ever fucked me. So really, missing Dirk is the biggest waste of time. Missing him is a reflex, a bad habit. I’m just so painfully lonely. It feels like I’ve swallowed a boa constrictor of loneliness. If only I had a book to work on. I wouldn’t feel so all alone.

  I’m deep in thought and I barely notice when a good-looking man in his early thirties leans suggestively on the table next to me.

  Ja, that’s it! I know what the book will be about! I’ve got it! The memoir wasn’t going to work but this affair of my mother’s would make for a great book. I can change it into a work of fiction, using the secrets and lies, and who knows, maybe I can work the killings in too, not, of course, in any self-incriminating way, of course not, but maybe Marika killed to protect Ariana? How far would a person go for their lover? I’ll turn the whole thing into a crime novel!

  I’m fired up. I have a sense of purpose. I’ll be a real writer. For the first time in months, I feel like myself again and I grin.

  “Hey good-lookin’,” the man says to me as I hop off my chair, “Whatcha got cookin’?”

  “Nothing for you,” I say, “not now, and not ever.” I slug back the rest of my wine. I need to get back upstairs and make notes. And that other thing, can I put that in the book? I shake my head. No way. I can’t even think about it. Besides, I have enough material to work with. I don’t need that too.

  I get back to my room and haul out my laptop. Ja for sure, this is going to be a great success.

  41.

  THE NEXT DAY, I DRIVE BACK to the farm and set up a study in my mother’s bedroom. I arrange some of her dresses on the bed along with her jewelry. I sit down to write and I’m instantly stymied. I have nothing. I expected a waterfall of copy and there isn’t even a tap drip. I am stuck staring at a blank page that stares back at me. I stare with desperation, the page, with accusation. Standoff.

  I need a picture of Marika. I have no clue what she looked like.

  I decide to try my luck at the public library and I drive into town. I ask the librarian if she has anything on file about my parents or perhaps my mother’s good friend, Marika Lamerdin. She says that a rich farmer in the area funded the archiving of the local newspapers into digital format and that it will be easy enough to check. We find a few pictures of my father winning hunting contests and there’s even a full-page article about me, how I won the gold medal in the South African Practical Shooting Association’s Junior Division, but the search seems to end there. I look at the grainy photograph of my earnest young self and think I still wear the same expression to this day. Like I know I don’t fit in and I’m embarrassed for even trying.

  I have another idea and I ask the librarian to search ladies golfing tournaments, recalling from one of the letters that Marika had won a golf tournament. And yes, there she is. But it’s disappointingly hard to see any kind of detail in the woman’s face. All I could discern is that Marika was tall and stout, strong.

  “How exactly do I would get to the Lamerdin farm?” I ask and the librarian draws me a map.

  I speed off to the farm. I know when I reach the perimeter because it is fenced off and sign-posted. These guys are big into security, the tall fences are topped with barbed wire and I pull up at a double-wide, double-high steel security gate. This working farm is a whole different operation to my father’s gentlemanly patch.

  It’s so intimidating that I nearly change my mind and turn back for home, but I press my finger to the intercom and speak into the buzzer. “Hello, yes, I am a neighbour, calling for a visit, Bernice Van Coller.”

  The gates swing open slowly. As I drive in, I marvel at the farm. No wonder they need this much barbed wire and enormous electronic gates. This farm is worth a fortune.

  I’m reluctant to get out of the car, what with the massive boerboel dogs circling the car and I stay where I am, lowering the window slightly when a woman comes out to greet me.

  “Can I help you?” she says, drying her hands on an apron and I apologize for inconveniencing her. I explain I’m back at my family home for a while and I have been going through my mother’s things and I realized that Marika and my mother had been friends and—

  “Friends?” the woman gives a bark of laughter. “Ja nee jong, they were more than that. Not that anybody spoke about it, mind you. Come on in, the dogs won’t bite. Come, have some cake and tea with me. The men are with the sheep. I get lonely. I’m Deanna.”

  I climb cautiously out of the car, not sure if the dogs are to be trusted but they quiet down when Deanna tells them to. I follow her into the cool house that is a close match to my own and I sit down at the kitchen table while Deanna puts the kettle on and fetches a cake out of the pantry.

  “Bundt. Double chocolate, I hope you like it. So yes, I know about our mothers.”

  “Why did you and I never meet?” I wonder out loud and the woman gives her strange barking laugh again.

  “We did, you just don’t remember. We saw a lot of each other when we were little kids. But I was older than you maybe that’s why I remember and you don’t. Then they sent us both away to boarding schools, me to the Afrikaans one and you to the fa
ncy English convent.

  “Did they send us away because of our mothers?” I ask and the woman shakes her head.

  “No. Kids went away to school, that’s all. My brothers did too, all the kids did. It’s the way it was. We were at primary school together here, but then we were sent to different high schools.”

  “And you knew about our mothers? What’s the story?”

  “I knew my mother loved your mother. Takes one to know one? I’m a lezzie too, never married. I live here with my three brothers, two of them are married and have kids. We’re like Dallas or Dynasty. All of us living on a farm together, sounds hunky dory but in reality … oh, in reality, it’s fine too. Family, you know how it goes.”

  “I don’t. My family are all gone.” I drink half my tea, surprised how hungry and thirsty I am.

  “But you’ve still got your half-brother,” Deanna comments and she looks sly and I sit up startled, my mouth full of cake.

  “I saw you on TV. You’re famous around these parts, at least among those of us who read books. I read a lot of cookbooks. I can’t be bothered with self-help shit, but I liked the baking side of it. This might even be one of your recipes.” She grins. “It was quite a shock to us that you have a brother.”

  “Half-brother,” I correct her and Deanna shrugs.

  “Whatever. Why didn’t you talk to him on the show? Did you speak to him afterwards? Was that just for the cameras that you were all fired up?”

  I regret having come and I once again realize the merits of a hermetic existence. I push my cake away.

  “Ag, now don’t be like that.” Deanna refills my tea. “Eat your cake. I’ll shut up about issues that aren’t my beeswax. And yet, you want to know about our mothers.”

  “I only found out now. I came across a bunch of letters.”

  “Ag, ja. The letters. There were many, over the years. My father burnt the ones from your mother. My mother tried to hide them, but he always found them and he burned them. He loved burning them. He was horrible in that, and many ways.”

  “Do you have a picture of your mother?”

  “Of course I do!”

  Deanna gets up and returns with a large old-fashioned photo album, which crackles and snaps when she opens it. Clear plastic sheets peel off the old, discoloured photographs. No doubt it was the film used but the whole world looked orange and brown.

  “What a time it was,” she says absently. “And then she killed herself, after your mother died. She had nothing to live for. I knew it was going to happen. I didn’t blame her. My father and my brothers hated your mother. They were ashamed. But I understood.”

  “Is she buried on your farm?” I ask, curious about Marika’s request to be cremated and scattered on my mother’s grave.

  “She is not. Your father had a talk with my father. Funny. Your father was a small little fellow and my father was a big ugly hulk, but he did what your father asked him. My mother’s got a fancy big gravestone here on the farm and we buried a coffin but my mother was not in it. Only I knew. I hid and listened when your father came. My mother was cremated and your father and I scattered her ashes on your mother’s grave.”

  More secrets my father kept from me. Had I even known him the way I thought?

  Deanna turns to a page. “My mother was more handsome than pretty.” I study the photograph and silently agree. Marika was mannish, with a clean, strong jaw, a straight nose and clear penetrating eyes.

  “She’s lovely,” I say.

  “Ja. I thought so too. She was a good woman; my father was a bastard. Your father, step-father, whatever, he was a gentleman. He was always kind to me.”

  “He was kind to everyone. That’s who he was. But he taught me how to fight in this life, he taught me that few things are free.”

  “But still, you never had to work like I did,” Deanna is bitter. “You were born into money and you could sit your expensive bottom down on a nice fat cushion and make more money. Isn’t that always the way? I knew you would be successful, everybody who met you knew. You lived in your own head, in that place of the future where you would be the queen of the castle and the rest of the world would serve you.”

  “That’s how you remember me?”

  “It’s how you were, jong. When you were a teenager and home from school, you were a heart-breaker. You broke two of my brother’s hearts.”

  “I don’t even remember dating them.”

  “You see. That’s who you are. I wouldn’t call you a user but you were always number one in your mind, the rest of the world never mattered.”

  “You are very blunt. Gets you many friends, does it?”

  Deanna barks again. “Haha. I can say what I like. It’s all I’ve got in life.”

  “Why don’t you move to the city, find work? Find a partner?”

  “It’s safer here. Life is easier here. Besides, it’s not like I’m that lonely. You’d be surprised at how many people play under the table in this town. I get my share of good times.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. I page through the album and stop when I come to pictures of Betty.

  My eyes fill with tears. “She left me,” I say and point to a picture, “Betty left me. Recently. I miss her terribly. She went to live with her family in KwaZulu Natal. I didn’t even know she had family there. The only contact I have for her is Rosie’s email and Rosie hates me.”

  “Ag man, Rosie hates everyone. Wait a moment, I’ve got Betty’s telephone number if you want.” She gets up, leaves the room, and then comes back with a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

  “How come you have this?” I ask.

  “Betty’s sister worked for us for years. I still speak to her regularly.”

  I take the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. I can’t imagine myself phoning Betty. The idea of contacting her is as alien as me calling a psychic to talk to my mother. But it’s nice of Deanna to try to help.

  I don’t know what to say after that. “I should go. Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”

  “Not at all. And I wasn’t. That’s your lying English manners. Here, take some cake with you.”

  She cuts a few slices, wraps them in some cling wrap, and holds them out. I thank her and say, “I don’t judge her. It was a shock to find out, that’s true. But I never understood why she stayed all these years when she seemed so out of place. I thought she stayed because she lacked the courage to leave my father and support herself and maybe that was true too, but she stayed because she loved your mother.”

  “My mother would have left here in heartbeat. She would have taken me and you and the four of us would have gone. Wouldn’t that have been something? But your mother said she loved your father, that he had rescued her when she needed it most, and that he loved you too much. She couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t repay the kindness he had shown her by taking you from him and leaving him. Who ever gets through this world happy? No one I know.”

  “Happiness is a myth. Like closure. They are just theories. All we have is the day ahead of us and the one we left behind. Labels don’t change what it was or what it will be. We walk the tightrope of time throughout our lives, balancing over the present, tiptoeing away from the past, and inching forwards to the future. That’s all we can do.”

  Deanna laughed. “Very deep, jong. Listen, it was nice to see you. You can come again, though, if you like.”

  “Maybe,” I say, although we both know I probably won’t.

  “Hey, jong,” Deanna says, suddenly, “you want a puppy?”

  “A puppy? No! What, a boerboel? They’re vicious.”

  “Listen juffrou, let me tell you something for nothing. You are being stupid as pigshit to be out there on the farm alone. And I hear Elsie thinks you got rid of Isaac and half of her family. If I were you, I’d get back to city before they donder the shit out of you and worse. A
puppy won’t protect you, but he will alert you if you hear a noise. I breed boerboels. That’s my thing. They cost a pretty penny, a hundred thousand rand a puppy, and I’ve got a long waiting list.”

  “A hundred thousand for a dog? I’m in the wrong business.”

  “Not just any dog. Come and see.”

  “I thought you said your brothers would be home soon?”

  “Ja, but if they think you are here for the dogs, they won’t mind. It’s the stuff with Ma they hate to hear about.”

  I follow Deanna out to a large barn behind the house and I lean over a stable door to look at the puppies.

  “Ag shame, look at them,” I say smiling like a fool. “I’ve fallen in love.”

  “From what I remember, that doesn’t mean much,” Deanna comments, and she opens the door, and I can hear she’s teasing me. “You can go in, pick them up if you like.”

  “These are the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” I kneel down in the straw. “Are they old enough to leave their mother?”

  “Ja, the other owners are coming to pick them up in a few days. They’re house-trained and everything.”

  “Which of them are taken?”

  “All of them actually, except for this one. I was going to keep him for myself but something about you says you need a dog.”

  “I do, do I?” But I laugh again and I take the puppy that Deanna is holding out to me. “I haven’t had a dog since I was a kid. I won’t remember what to do.” I take the puppy. He’s the colour of Lyles Golden Syrup and he’s a solid weight in my arms, warm and reassuring. “Look at his wrinkled forehead. He’s got a head like a Shar Pei!”

  “You don’t do anything. You just love him. But when you go back to Johannesburg, you must take him for walks.”

  “I can manage that. I want to pay you, it’s not fair you should be out of pocket for this.”

  “He’s a present, stupid. I told you. I was going to keep him, but now he’s yours. You weren’t my favourite person growing up but that doesn’t mean I want to see you killed. What are you going to call him?”